Francis Edward Ledwidge (19 August 188731 July 1917) was an Irish poet. From Slane, County Meath, and sometimes known as the "poet of the blackbirds", he was later also known as a First World War war poet. He befriended the established writer Lord Dunsany, who helped with the publication of his works. He was killed in action at Ypres in 1917.Lowry, Donal in: McGuire, James and Quinn, James (eds): Dictionary of Irish Biography From the Earliest Times to the Year 2002; Royal Irish Academy Vol. 5, Ledwidge, Francis Edward pp. 394-97; Cambridge University Press (2009)
Born to a poor family in Slane, County Meath, Ledwidge started writing at an early age and was first published in a local newspaper at the age of 14. Finding work as a labourer and miner, he was also a trade union activist, and a keen patriot and nationalist, associated with Sinn Féin. He became friendly with a local landowner, the writer Lord Dunsany, who gave him a workspace in the library of Dunsany Castle, and introduced him to literary figures including William Butler Yeats, Æ and Katherine Tynan, with whom he had a long-term correspondence. He was elected to a local government post and helped organise the local branch of the Irish Volunteers, while Dunsany edited the first volume of his poetry and helped him secure publication for it.
Despite having sided with the faction of the Irish Volunteers which opposed participation in the war, and against the wishes of Lord Dunsany, he enlisted in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in October 1914 and continued to write poetry on campaign, sending work to Dunsany and to family and other friends. Having been posted to several theatres of the war, he was killed in action in July 1917 during the early phase of the Battle of Passchendaele. At the time of his death, he and Dunsany were in advanced preparation for a second volume of his work, and Dunsany later arranged for a third volume and a collected edition of 122 poems in 1919. Some musical settings of his work were also composed. Further poems, from the archives at Dunsany Castle and some material held by families of relatives and friends, were published by Ledwidge's biographer, Alice Curtayne, in 1974, by enthusiast Hubert Dunn and by the two major Ledwidge memorial groups, in 1997 and 2022 respectively.
A museum of his life and work was opened in his birthplace cottage in 1982 and was the site of multiple events in the decades after; it remains operational as of 2022. Ledwidge was selected as one of twelve prominent war poets - and the only Irish one - for the exhibition Anthem for Doomed Youth at the Imperial War Museum in London in 2002. He has been memorialised at events at the Slane museum, in Ypres and in Inchicore, Dublin, with his official centenary commemoration at Slane in 2017 and his work set to music and performed by Anúna at the former Inchicore barracks the same year. A few Ledwidge manuscripts are held in the National Library of Ireland, and the main surviving collection, including his early works, is in the archives of Dunsany Castle, along with letters. Selections of both handwritten and typed manuscripts have been shown publicly at the Anthem for Doomed Youth exhibition and at a book launch at Slane Castle in 2022, and privately to scholars and members of the Ledwidge Cottage Museum committee.
Early life and work Francis Ledwidge, known to his family as "Frank", was born at Janeville (Baile Sinead) on the eastern edge of Slane, in County Meath, Ireland, the eighth of nine children in a poverty-stricken family. His parents, Patrick Ledwidge and his wife Anne Lynch (1853–1926), believed in giving their children the best education they could afford; however, when Francis was only five, his father Patrick died, which forced his wife and the children out to work at an early age.
Francis left the local national school aged thirteen, and while he continued to educate himself, he worked at what work he could find. Employment included work as a farm hand, road surface mender and supervisor of roadwork, copper miner at Beaupark Mine near Slane (from which post he was sacked for organising a strike for better mining conditions, three years before the general 1913 strike, having been a trade union activist since 1906) and, briefly, a shop assistant in Dublin.
Appointed secretary of the Slane branch of the Meath Labour Union (1913–14) he had aspirations towards permanent white-collar work. He was known for his connections with Sinn Féin.
Early poetry and nationalism Strongly built, with striking brown eyes and a sensuous face, Ledwidge was a keen poet, writing wherever he could – sometimes even on gates or fence posts. From the age of fourteen his works were published in a local newspaper, the Drogheda Independent, and reflected his passion for the Boyne Valley. He was also published with some regularity in the Irish Weekly Independent and Sunday Independent from mid-1909. These early poetry publications were largely unpaid.
While working as a road labourer, he wrote to the Anglo-Irish landlord and fantasy writer and dramatist Lord Dunsany, in 1912, enclosing copybooks containing his early work. Dunsany, a man of letters already well known in Dublin and London literary and dramatic circles, and whose own start in publishing had been with a few poems, felt that his work had potential, and promoted him in Dublin, including at a salon of Æ. Dunsany and Æ introduced Ledwidge to a range of Irish literary figures, including W.B. Yeats and Oliver St. John Gogarty, with whom Ledwidge became further acquainted.
Dunsany supported Ledwidge with money and literary advice for some years, providing him with access to and a workspace in Dunsany Castle's library, where he met the Irish writer Katharine Tynan, subsequently corresponding with her regularly.Hickey, D.J. & Doherty , J.E., A new Dictionary of Irish History from 1800, p.303, Gill & MacMillan (2003) Dunsany later prepared his first collection of poetry Songs of the Fields, which successfully appealed to the expectations of the Irish Literary Revival and its social taste for rural poetry. Despite Ledwidge's growing association with the aristocratic Lord Dunsany, he retained a keen interest in the conditions of working men. He was one of the founder members in 1906 of the Slane branch of the Meath Labour Union. He familiarised himself with the writings of James Connolly and, despite the Vatican's condemnations of Marxism, Ledwidge found no contradiction between Roman Catholicism and socialism. In 1913 he was temporary secretary of the union, the following year elected to the Navan district rural council and board of guardians.
Home Rule
Ledwidge was a keen patriot and nationalist. His efforts to found a branch of the Gaelic League in Slane were thwarted by members of the local council. The area organiser encouraged him to continue his struggle, but Francis gave up. He did manage to act as a founding member with his brother Joseph of the Slane Branch of the Irish Volunteers (1914), a paramilitary force created in response to the founding of the Ulster Volunteers, who had sworn to resist Home Rule for Ireland even if it meant civil war. The Irish Volunteers were set up to fight the Unionists if necessary and to ensure that Home Rule would come to pass.
Military service On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, and on account of Ireland's involvement in the war, the Irish Volunteers split into two factions, the National Volunteers who supported John Redmond's appeal to join Irish regiments in support of the Allied cause and those who did not. Francis was originally of the latter party. Nevertheless, having defended this position strongly at a local council meeting, he soon after enlisted (24 October 1914) in Lord Dunsany's regiment, joining the 5th battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, part of the 10th (Irish) Division. This was against Lord Dunsany's wishes and he had offered Ledwidge a stipend to support him if he stayed out of the war. Some have speculated that he went to war because his sweetheart Ellie Vaughey had found a new lover, John O'Neill, whom she later married, but Ledwidge himself wrote, quite forcefully, that he could not stand aside while others sought to defend Ireland's freedom.Letter Ledwidge to Chase p. 698
Later poetry and war Ledwidge seems to have fitted into Army life well, and rapidly achieved promotion to lance corporal. In 1915, he saw action in the Landing at Suvla Bay during the Gallipoli Campaign, where he suffered severe rheumatism. Having survived huge losses sustained by his company, Ledwidge became ill after a back injury gained during the Battle of Kosturino in Serbia (December 1915), a locale which inspired a number of poems.
Ledwidge was dismayed by the news of the Easter Rising, writing a lament for his friend Thomas MacDonagh, one of the Rising's leaders who was executed in May 1916. He grew disenchanted with the war effort, and was court-martialled and demoted for overstaying his furlough and being drunk in uniform (May 1916). He gained and lost stripes over a period in Derry (he was a corporal when the introduction to his first book was written), and then, returned to the front, received back his lance corporal's stripe one last time in January 1917 when posted to the Western Front, joining 1st Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, part of 29th Division.
Ledwidge continued to write when feasible throughout the war years, though he lost many works, for example, in atrocious weather in Serbia. He sent much of his output to Lord Dunsany, himself moving on war assignments, as well as to readers among family, friends and literary contacts.
Death and aftermath
The poems Ledwidge wrote on active service reveal his pride at being a soldier, as he believed, in the service of Ireland. He often wondered whether he would find a soldier's death. On 31 July 1917, a group from Ledwidge's battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were road-laying in preparation for an assault during the earliest stages of the Third Battle of Ypres (July to November 1917), near the village of Boezinge, northwest of Ypres.
According to Alice Curtayne, "Ledwidge and his comrades had been toiling since the early morning at road-making. The army's first need was men; their second, guns; their third roads. These latter consisted mainly of heavy beech planks bolted together, which could be rapidly laid down. No advance could be supported in that sodden land without a sufficiency of these communications tracks, six or seven feet wide. Supplies were conveyed by pack mules over the wooden paths. Survivors concur in placing the road work done by B Company that day one mile north-east of Hell Fire Corner, so called because it was very exposed to German shelling. There was a violent rainstorm in the afternoon, shrouding the region in a grey monochrome. Sullenly, the enemy's long-range guns continued to fling their shells far behind the lines. Road-work could not be suspended, however, as the tracks were in use as fast as they were laid down. Tea was issued to the men and, drenched to the skin, they stopped to swallow it. A shell exploded beside Ledwidge and he was instantly killed."Alice Curtayne (1998), Francis Ledwidge: A Life of the Poet, page 188.
A Roman Catholic military chaplain, Father Devas, was the first on the scene. That night, Father Devas wrote in his diary, "Crowds at Holy Communion. Arranged for service but washed out by rain and fatigues. Walk in rain with dogs. Ledwidge killed, blown to bits; at Confession yesterday and Mass and Holy Communion this morning. R.I.P."
Burial